Surviving Quarantine as a Highly Sensitive Parent

Stay home, avoid crowds, and cancel your plans. Sounds like a dream for an introverted HSP, unless you happen to be quarantined at home with a couple of miniature mayhem makers called your children. Toys are everywhere, your poor ears are assaulted by constant requests and demands, everything is covered in crumbs, and somehow everyone is eating constantly, skipping naps, and waking up earlier than ever.

Many parents are trying to navigate working from home while caring for young children, and being highly sensitive makes it that much harder to deal with the constant change, uncertainty, and sense of danger. Our nervous systems are simply overloaded. We might feel paralyzed and frazzled, or depressed and hopeless, unsure of what to do and how to cope.

So, how can we survive this time as highly sensitive parents? I think the key lies in adjusting our expectations for ourselves during this unprecedented time.

I’m not sure about you, but my social media feeds are filled with ideas about how to maximize and optimize this time stuck at home. Take your kid on a virtual museum tour! Organize a new game or craft every hour! Create a schedule to keep everyone on a routine! Go for a teddy bear hunt! Do yoga with your one year old! Sew hospital masks and write letters to seniors!

All of these are wonderful ideas, and I’m so glad to see our community coming together to offer services, resources, and support to each other during this stressful time. However, as a highly sensitive person, my nervous system is already operating at capacity to deal with the disruptions to my schedule and process everything that’s happening in the world. I need to move at a slower pace to give my brain and body time to absorb and make sense of everything. Follow your instincts about what works for you and your family, then give yourself permission to skip everything else.

This is what it looks like for me: I know that a loose routine helps my day feel more predictable and ordered. I know that Pinterest craft projects make me literally want to scream. I know my kids have zero interest in following a YouTube lesson or exercise video, but they love to play chase and wrestle in the living room. I know that I can offer support in some ways to my community, but other ways push me too far out of my comfort zone.

In essence, we need to be gentle with ourselves and let go of any guilt or anxiety about not doing “enough” during this time. Giving ourselves permission to do whatever helps us get through the day – whether that’s extra screen time, taking a nap instead of cleaning the house, or saying no to that Zoom happy hour because you just need a minute to yourself – is essential for our mental and emotional health.

I can’t expect myself to operate at the same productivity level as a non-HSP, and sometimes this frustrates me (especially as a mom of young kids and a small business owner). However, slowing down and taking time to rest is actually a good thing right now, so it’s the perfect time to embrace my innate tendency to do just that. As long as my expectations for myself are in line with my abilities and preferences, I’ll be able to weather these changes in a much healthier way.